Anduril taps former Pentagon acquisition official to bolster international business

On the same subject

• 

  July 20, 2020 | International, Land

  US Army releases draft RFP for Bradley vehicle replacement

  By: Aaron Mehta WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army on Friday issued a draft request for proposals for the preliminary design phase of its delayed optionally manned fighting vehicle, or OMFV, the first major step in a relaunched competition to replace the Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle. The preliminary phase will be open for 40 days, with the goal of gathering industry feedback ahead of the final RFP, which will come later this year. That final RFP will award of up to five design contracts in June 2021, setting the next stage in the competition. “As we continue to progress through the first phase of our five-phased approach for the OMFV program, communication, inclusive feedback and innovative thinking from industry remains key,” Maj. Gen. Brian Cummings, the Army's program executive officer for ground combat systems, said in a statement. “We are looking forward to receiving feedback and learning from industry what's in the realm of the possible as we continue to develop this truly transformational vehicle for our Soldiers.” Added Brig. Gen. Ross Coffman, director of the Next Generation Combat Vehicles Cross-Functional Team: “Accurately defining the desired set of capabilities without over-constraining the design is critically important. “The Army is committed to open communication with industry to ensure the characteristics and eventual requirements of the OMFV are informed by technological advances.” The focus on gathering industry feedback should not be a surprise, given the recent history of the program. When the OMFV program was conceived, the Army planned to hold a prototyping competition, selecting two winning teams to build prototypes with a downselect to one at the end of an evaluation period. But in October, the Army ended up with only one bidder in the OMFV competition — General Dynamics Land Systems — after other competitors dropped out, citing requirements and schedule concerns. As a result, the Army in January announced it would be relaunching the program to ensure more competition going forward — a decision that led to service leaders taking heat from Congress during testimony in March. OMFV is the first large acquisition effort to come out of Army Futures Command. The draft RFP, posted on a government contracting website Friday, drives home the point by stating: “To permit industry design freedom and promote innovation, the Army has avoided quantifying or prescribing critical levels of performance wherever possible.” “We do not want to box industry into a solution,” Cummings said. “We want to incentivize industry as they lean forward and think creatively to bring the Army innovative technologies and solutions necessary to achieve our vision — both in terms of the ability to integrate newer technology we are seeing today and leaving space for future growth on the OMFV platform.” https://www.defensenews.com/land/2020/07/17/army-drops-draft-rfp-for-bradley-replacement/

• 

  May 16, 2018 | International, Aerospace

  The US Air Force Is Adding Algorithms to Predict When Planes Will Break

  The airlines already use predictive maintenance technology. Now the service's materiel chief says it's a “must-do for us.” The U.S. Air Force has started to use algorithms to predict when its aircraft will break, part of an effort to minimize the time and money they consume in the repair shop. The use of predictive analytics has been blazed by airlines, which monitor their fleets' parts in an effort to replace broken components just before — and crucially, not after — they break. “I believe it is a must-do for us,” said Gen. Ellen Pawlikowski, the head of Air Force Materiel Command, the arm of the Air Force that oversees the maintenance of its planes. She spoke Tuesday at a Defense Writers Group breakfast in Washington. “We see this as a huge benefit.” If the Air Force could reduce the risk of unexpected breakage — and the attendant need to fly replacement parts and repair crews around the globe — it could reduce costs and boost mission effectiveness. It could also increase the usefulness of the current fleet by reducing the number of aircraft that need to be be held in reserve as backups. It starts with gathering data, such as the temperature of engine parts or the stresses on the airframe. “We are trying to leverage what we already get off of airplanes, as opposed to trying to go in and put instruments in places,” Pawlikowski said. “It turns out there's quite a bit that's there, but it may not be a direct measurement. In order to measure the temperature in this one particular spot, I'm getting information somewhere else.” Artificial intelligence and machine learning can then determine patterns. The general said the Air Force has been learning a lot from Delta, the world's second-largest commercial airline. “Delta has demonstrated the effectiveness of predictive maintenance in dramatically reducing the number of delays to flights due to maintenance,” she said. Over the past three years, Air Mobility Command — the arm of the Air Force that oversees all of its large cargo planes and aerial refueling tankers — has been organizing the data it collects on some of its planes. It has started using the predictive maintenance technology on its massive C-5 airlifters. The Air Force is also using the technology on the B-1 bomber. “The B-1 is an airplane that we actually bought with a whole bunch of data that we weren't using,” Pawlikowski said. “We started to take that data in and start to analyze it....We're very excited about this because we see huge potential to improve aircraft availability and drive down the cost.” She said she “was impressed when I saw some of the data that they were showing me.” The Air Force Lifecycle Management Center, which reports to Pawlikowski, has been funding these trials “by finding the loose change in the seat cushions,” she said. “As we have now shown some things ... we're seeing more and more interest in it and we're looking at increasing the investment in that to bring it further,” Pawlikowski said of the predictive maintenance. Last September, Gen. Carlton “Dewey” Everhart, head of Air Mobility Command, stressed his desire to use predictive maintenance, but warned it would cost money to get the datafrom the companies that make the planes. “In some cases, we'll be working this collaboratively with our industry partners,” Pawlikowski said Tuesday. “In other cases, we'll be doing it completely organically.” Air Mobility Command is also using predictive maintenance technology on the C-130J airlifter. The latest version of the venerable Lockheed Martin cargo plane — the J model — collects reams of data as it flies. In April, the Lockheed announced it was teaming with analytics firm SAS to crunch that data. “Everything we've been doing up to a certain point has been looking in the rear-view mirror with the data,” said Lockheed's Duane Szalwinski, a senior manager with his company's sustainment organization who specializes in analytics. “We're going to be able to look forward.” Lockheed is working on a six-month demonstration for Air Mobility Command; officials hope to be able to predict when certain parts will break before a flight. “If we're able to do that, it kind of changes the game in how you maintain and operate a fleet,” Szalwinski said. The data will give military planners a wealth of information about their aircraft that could help determine the best aircraft to deploy. “All those things you now know you have insights as to what you will need at the next flight, so you act accordingly,” he said. “Once we prove that we understand the probability of failure of these parts ... all things then become possible,” Szalwinski said. “Now it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. And if you know when, you can start acting accordingly. It would be a gamechanger in the way you manage a fleet.” Lockheed also wants to use the predictive maintenance tech on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. “The beauty of this is that the toolsets that we're developing, the models, how we clean the data, how we build the models, how we build the algorithms, all of that is not unique to a platform,” Szalwinski said. Still, instituting predictive maintenance practices fleet-wide is not going to happen overnight, particularly as since it will take time to understand the data, Pawlikowski said. Using this technology will require a cultural shift among maintenance crews because they'll be replacing parts before they actually fail, Pawlikowski said. “One of the big benefits is the reduction in the amount of time the airmen on the flightline spends troubleshooting a broken part” because “we will take them off before they break,” she said. https://www.defenseone.com/business/2018/05/us-air-force-adding-algorithms-predict-when-planes-will-break/148234/

• 

  May 4, 2018 | International, Aerospace

  DIUx wants drones that are out for blood

  By: Kelsey Atherton For drone delivery to make sense, with existing capabilities of drones, the cargo needs to be relatively light, it needs to have tremendous value, and it needs to urgently travel the last mile by air. This is why, to the extent we've seen drones used for delivery in the wild, it's more likely as a means to carry contraband into a prison than it is a practical alternative to the postal service. But there's one other cargo that fits the description, and that's blood itself. Defense Innovation Unit Experimental, the Pentagon's stand-up Silicon Valley-focused acquisition house, is looking for a drone that can carry a modest cargo of blood, through the dark of night toward where it's most needed. Call it “Dronesferatu.” From FCW: The specs of the solicitation from the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental -- the ability to deliver a 5-pound package over 100 kilometers in “austere environments” -- strongly suggest that they're looking at an unmanned aerial vehicle system that supports refrigeration or other means of temperature control. “These deliveries, ideally automated, will provide essential items to critically wounded military personnel as quickly as possible after an injury occurs,” the April 23 solicitation states. “Ability to sustain a very high frequency of operations over an extended period of time is critical. Speed of delivery, reliability and robustness to failure and interference, response time, and overall delivery throughput are critical.” Getting the right blood to the right people as fast as possible means saving lives. To that end, DARPA's funded research into metabolic rate reduction to see if there's a way to make people bleed out more slowly, or into using female hormones to similarly prolong the survivable time without transfusion. In 2013, the U.S. Army conducted a study on pre-hospital transfusion for battlefield casualties being medically evacuated in Afghanistan, and in 2012 Canadian Blood Services even tested the viability of paratroopers transporting blood for transfusion. Consider blood drones complementary to this field of work. Early tests by researchers at Johns Hopkins and Uganda's Makerere University proved that small vials of blood transported by drone were just as viable as blood transported by car. Those same researchers followed up with a test of blood delivery from ship-to-shore, for possible use in response to coastal areas hit by natural disasters, where the roads are impassable but drones could still safely fly. The American startup Zipline demonstrated its own blood delivery drones in 2016, and has for a year and a half worked on delivering blood by robot to parts of Rwanda. DIUx's ask, that a drone fly over 60 miles and carry 5 pounds of blood, is not far off from what Zipline's drones can already do, with the company stating a range of 100 miles and a cargo capacity of just under four pounds. Weight and range tradeoffs are at the heart of aviation design, so it's likely that vendors have already pitched something within the bounds of the solicitation. Should that drone make a fast turnaround from ask to prototype to useful tool, the troops fighting abroad may gain a better shot at surviving otherwise-fatal blood loss. Unlikely that the reverse-vampire drones will look like bats, though. https://www.c4isrnet.com/unmanned/2018/05/03/diux-wants-drones-that-are-drones-out-for-blood/